


The Art of Losing

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: A rather ill-advised cure for terror, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 20:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16394189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: The night is cold, but warmth and respite come with a cost.





	The Art of Losing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



> Title from this poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art
> 
> I have no idea why this failed to post anon the first time, but hopefully it’s fixed now!

She’s always been here.

That’s what you told the crew, when they asked, and it’s easy to forget that it’s a lie – that there had been a time when she hadn’t kept her tidy cabin and paid her way with surgeon’s skills. Dates and details slip away when you try to grasp them, leaving only a vague outline that fits silently and easily into the pattern of your voyages. The truth is, you can’t remember when she stepped aboard, and you don’t remember inviting her.

You must have, though. You’re sure of that. You must have.

Tonight she lingers at the prow, her arms folded over the railing, watching the light of false stars glimmer on the waves. You linger with her. There’s a fear on you these days – of darkness; of the things seen at the edges of your vision that darkness can’t erase – and her company eases it. Any company would, perhaps, but it’s hers you’ve found. Hers you’ve sought, maybe. It’s hard, sometimes, to say. 

“Will you tell me,” she asks, soft-voiced, “a story of love?”

You don’t have any stories like that. You tell her so, and she turns towards you with the whisper of silk on silk, placid as the zee before a storm. Even through the heavy fabric of your coat, her hand is warm against your arm.

“It doesn’t have to be passion,” she says, “nor anything crimson or carnal,” and still you shake your head: no lass in port, no brothers or sisters by blood or bond, a father you know only as a name and an obligation unfulfilled. Yours is a life lived free of chains, and when she looks at you, you can’t tell whether it’s pity in her eyes or something more unsettling.

You shift in place, draw your coat up tighter and shiver, from fear or cold or the simple weight of her gaze on you. There’s frost in the air, this close to Void’s Approach. The water is very dark, and inside your cabin, it’s dark too, thick with murmuring shadows you don’t think your meager lantern will be able to chase away. You don’t want to go back there alone.

You hear yourself say, “Stay with me.”

There’s a breath of silence, a deeper chill, the indefinable sense of something, somewhere, changing. The wind picks up and dies again, and just for an instant, you see her clear. She drinks in light. She casts no shadow. Her skin is pale as smuggled moonlight, her eyes are a color that is not violet, and when she leans towards you, her fingers so gentle as she traces the line of your jaw, you can feel part of yourself slipping away.

“I’m not whole,” she says, “but neither are you.”

And you think you understand what she means by that, or enough of it, at least, to hear both the truth and the warning. You know better than to trust in placid waters. But you don’t step away, except to let her follow you down to the room where you sleep and too often dream.

She pauses at the threshold – _have you heard a tale like that before?_ – and you hold out a hand to her, and draw her into the room and into your arms. You unpin her hair and feel it fall through your fingers, thinking of bonds and bindings. Her laugh is a low vibration against your throat, and you know she has no stories to give you, of love or anything else. She can’t even give you what you’ve wanted for so long, which is closer to forgiveness than forgetting, but either, right now, will do.

The cabin is dark, though your lamp flickers on the table, and the air is cold, and she’s always been here. Her hands have always been at the lapels of your coat, and her hair has always been loose over slender shoulders, and she’s always looked at you like that, with void-dark eyes and a loneliness deep and old enough to feel like hunger. But you’re safe here, and not alone, and though you can feel the breath slipping from your lungs when she kisses you, it isn’t at all like drowning. What it feels like is silk against your skin, and what it tastes like is clear, empty light from a place you’ve never been. A gift, you think: you can’t remember what it’s like to be afraid.

You wonder what she’ll take from you in turn, as her price or by her nature, and whether or not it will be worth it in the end. You wonder if you’ll miss it when it’s gone.


End file.
